File System

1. I let Mandrake 7.0 automatically partition my disk. It did so into boot, root, swap, and home. Mandrake has assigned a personal directory to me as /home/mlb (my initials). Fine, if mlb is where I am to store my personal files.

2. I am trying to install StarOffice 5.1 so that I, or another person, can use it. Star Office tries to auto install itself under '/home/mlb', which will either prevent another user from accessing it, or should I give permission could result in their modifying it, let alone their accessing my personal files.

3. I tried to install it as '/home/Office51, but Mandrake wouldn't permit this. I then discovered that there is 'home, and 'Home'. 'While home is a sub-directory of /root, '/Home' is a partition.

4. I assume that non-system software belongs on the 'Home' partition. As user 'root' I have, therefore, installed Star Office as /Home/Office51. Mandrake accepts this, but, when I leave 'root' and log myself in as in as 'mlb' I cannot access it.

5. Where, then, in Mandrake's scheme of things should StarOffice be installed? I notice, for example, it is organised somewhat differently than SuSE If I understand SuSE, I would install Star Office under /usr/opt. I tried this with Mandrake but could not access it.

6. In summary, what I suspect I need to know is where what optional progams (such as StarOffice51), of what type, go where in Mandrake. I cannot figure this out from the Mandrake on-line manual. Also, where can I find a descriptive Directory/file tree that shows how Mandrake files are set up?

Where you installed StarOffice is fine, it can go anywhere. The problem you are experiencing lies in the installation method. A basic install of SO is a "single user" install that allows someone with no special privs to install it in their home directory. The side affect of that is that its use in limited to that of the installer.

To fix, completely remove the contents of /Home/Office51 and then re-install as root with the command "setup /net". This installs SO as a shared app usable by anyone. You'll notice that it won't ask for any "personal info" during the install. Once it's been installed, as an ordinary user, execute /Home/Office51/bin/soffice and it will set up a local (~/Office51) dir localized to your account (about 10Mb or so).

As root you can run the printer setup tool (spadmin), if desired, to globally configure printers for the installation. Users can configure their own printers, but you can save them a bit of work by doing so at the SO installation level.

There are a few patches for the Sun distributed 5.1a version (it's superior the the original 5.1 distributed by StarDiv). I know that they are available via Sun's contract support services and from StarDivs ftp site (ftp://ftp.stardiv.de/pub/support/so51a/).

I think I didn't quite answer all of your questions. As to (5) and (6), there really isn't any basic difference between Mandrake's directory layout's and that of any other Unix. It may have some utilities and/or config files in different locations, but the basic system is that of Unix. I suspect that you weren't able to install in /usr/opt/Office51 simply because /usr/opt didn't exist. If, as root, you created /usr/opt (and the filesystem that contains /usr has sufficient free space) SO will quite happily install there.

The answer to the general question of where to install things is, it depends. Packages installed via an rpm will already know where they are supposed to go. Other packages that are or can be location independent (StarOffice, Acrobat, Netscape, etc) can be installed aywhere you have space. You do need to know where they were installed and might need to modify your path to use them.

Again thank you. While I'm still having to figure out the other matters wse've been discussing, I also need to get on with my work: hence the StarOffice install. I'll sort this out, then follow up. I will also have a look at your new replies to the previous topic.

Back to StarOffice. It would ne so nice if once in a while infotech was simple!

1ut. I have S-0 5.1a. I have deleted the files, but could not do it cleanly as I couldn't find S-O's uninstaller.

2. I re-installed, but the CD version gives no options between single and net users, but proceeds immediately to the personal information screen. I backed out, realised I had neglected to type in "setup /net", did so, and had '/net refused'. I suspect the CD I have - provided by a Linux magazine - has been made up for single users.

3. Went to my SuSE CDs (I purchased SuSE 6.3, but gave up, finding its intsallation still too awkward, but more, my remapped keyboard [Swiss French] would not work under Star Office, which sent it back to default US qwerty). I decided to try to mount S-O from SuSE, but got a dependency message calling for 'jre_old.fil' I eventually found it, but then discovered naturally enough that I do not know to which partition (root? home?), and which directory (usr? opt?) and sub-directory (lib?) it should be installed.

Any ideas? I would normally just download a new copy from Stardivision,
but outside of the time, as I have not yet got my comms set up in Mandrake, I'll have to bring it into a file in Windows, and then figure out the transfet (M-tools, I presume) from Windows to Mandrake, and then install....

So far as I know, there isn't a "single user" distribution. Nor has there ever been an "uninstaller". Typically, you'd remove the contents by "rm -r /path-to-so/*; rm -r /path-to-so/.??*".

How were you doing the install? From a GUI or from a shell? The normal structure would be a couple of dir's at the top level (documentation, office51). In the office51 dir is "setup", so you'd cd to that dir and run "./setup /net" (as root of course).

Finally - almost. I guess I have been walking into this briar patch backwards with my eyes closed. Anyway:

1- I have reinstalled S-O. The reason why the './setup /net' didn't work is that it had to be done from the S-O '/bin'. All ok, particularly as your comment that I would not be asked for personal information at startup kept me on the right track. .

2- Using './soffice' after installation, as 'root' took me through the whole set-up at that level, but I am unable to set up and S-O from my home directory. It is sitting there, but it looks as if I haven't understood Mandrake-Linux 'permissions' system, as this now seems to be the problem.

3- Although as 'root' I have gone into the folders in my home diredctory, clicked on 'properties'/'permissions' and then on user/group/other, when I log off as 'root', and log in again as 'mlb', I keep finding myself blocked. I have started at the top level, but for example, although I can open up S-O in my home folder, I run into 'permission denied' when I try to start S-O.

4- The permissions matter also concerns folders/sub-folders that I have created to hold my work once I get started. Does this mean that every time I create a folder I must also, as 'root' set up permissions?

5- Or Is there some global way of just making sure that the permissions I need to run S-O and access my folders can be established? I don't have a major security problem as only occasionally will someone else want to use my laptop. My concern is only that who ever does cannot get where I don't want them to go - such as makinng a mess of my Linux, S-O and other configurations.

I think I may not have made one crucial step as clear as I should have. The "user setup" must be done by, and only done by, the end user. It's more than just file permissions. The UID of that user and the login name gets encoded into some of the SO files. It sounds like you were still root when you ran "soffice" and thus only root can use the local copy. But we can fix that.

As root, delete the Office51 and the .sversionrc in your home directory. Then log in as yourself and run "/path-to-Office51-installation/bin/soffice", answer the questions, and you should then be "good-to-go".

OK- I found what to do, checked the S-O manual, and decided to make a clean re-installation of both Mandrake and S-O. No problem until S-O asked me for the directory to install, and then told me I have insufficient diskspace and to find another drive.

I have 4.2 GB. I am temporarilly keeping Win98 on my hdd (1.5 GB), with the rest given over to Linux and split between /boot, / (Root), /Swap, and /Home. For the most part Linux has set itself up on the Root partition, but with some excess files I need to delete.

In trying to install S-O as /net, S-O the browse facility only shows the /(root) partition, which includes a 'home', but does not show the 'Home'partition, which is where I want to install it, and on which I have plenty of space.

If I try to set '/Home/Office51', S-O it creates a new folder called 'Home' on the root partition, giving me 'home' and 'Home'. It then tries to install in the root 'Home' folder, which is the wrong place:

How do I - or where do I find the information to - instruct S-O to install Office51 on the /Home partition, and not on /(Root) and in /home (which is where my user files, and my link to S-O will be held)? I haven't found this in the Mandrake on-line user guide, or in the SuSE one that I have. Perhaps I am looking in the wrong place.

Highfive is so simple that setting up every meeting room takes just minutes and every employee will be able to start or join a call from any room with ease. Never be called into a meeting just to get it started again. This is how video conferencing should work!

My bet is that you'll see that there isn't a "/Home" but that there is a "/home". Hopefull when you set up your account you specified that your home directory to be something like "/home/mlb". If you simply told it that /home was your home dir then we need to fix that before going any further.

Hence, my confusion. I seem to have more homes in my directories than I need, yet all I want to do is put S-O in a folder on /hda8.

I'm coming to the conclusion, incidentally, that despite the fact that Linux is free and the various versions are reasonably priced, that the set-up time for
Microsoft users who do not have a degree in computer science, is far more costly than purchasing from Microsoft - something I prefer to discontinue. :-)

Linux is, well, just different. One thing to keep in mind is that all Unix operating systems are case sensitive, while windows isn't. I have to fault a number of the things that have been done with Linux to make it more "windows user" friendly, like the filemanager. If you play around a bit with NT using a command line rather than a filemanager, you'll find that you can create mixed case file names and NT will honor them. However, from the filemanager a lowercase filename normally gets shown with a leading capital. So, to make the filemanager look more like what a windows user is used to it displays some things with a leading capital. As long as you do everything with the filemanager it works. Unfortunately, those names aren't what Linux actually uses. Personally, I never use file managers on anything, including windows (I load the cygwin-32 stuff and run bash).

Lets do this and see what we've actually got. Show me what "ls /home" displays.

The problem is I'm just a graduate from C/PM to MS Dos to Windows without getting to NT and not a whiff of Unix until I tried to make sense out of the SuSE 5.x Linux manual and gave up. Tried again with 6.3 and ran out of time trying to deal with keyboard mapping, but too much other work to-do. I recently came across Mandrake, thought I would give it a try, particularly as they have paid far more attention to simplifying the installation procedures.... then sound card, modem, display...problems until I found Experts' Exchange.... I appreciate the time you have put at my disposal.

The contents of /home are what I had hoped. The file manager shows your home directory (which in fact is /home/mlb) as /Home. There really isn't a /Home, it's simply a tag in the filemanager pointing to /home/mlb.

Tell the StarOffice installation tool to use /home/Office51 and it'll work. Once the "setup /net" finishes. Log in as yourself (mlb) and run "/home/Office51/bin/soffice".

OK. All sorted out, S-O is loaded and running. I am still unclear why the file manager shows 'Home' and 'home'. The S-O setup dialogue showed that 'Home' which is on '/root' has insufficient space, but 'home' which is on '/' has sufficient space. So there seem to be two locations called home, which is just a bit confusing for the uninitiated.

Anyway, I'm gradually finding my way in to the labyrinth, but have still to face the Minotaur.

The next task is to do something about the modem and sound cards. I tried to unzip the modem file download, but no success so far...

Probably, /Home just got created when SO tried to install in /Home/Office51. It can probably be removed withou causing an harm. If you want to be safe, rename it (mv /Home /xHome) and if everything looks okay, then "rm /xHome".

How did you try to unpack the modem support and what was the download name"

As to 'Home', this was there before I tried to install Office51. See previous file list and you will see that 'Home' is a major folder, and it is not the same as 'home' which has entirely different contents. If I delete 'Home' then I lose the sub-directories:

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